Choir & Organ is the leading independent magazine for all professionals and amateurs in the choral and organ worlds – whether you are an organist, choral director or singer, organ builder, keen listener, or work in publishing or the record industry, Choir & Organ is a must-read wherever you live and work.

Every two months our expert contributors bring you beautifully illustrated features on newly built and restored organs, insights into the lives and views of leading organists, choral directors and composers, profiles of pioneering and well-established choirs, and topical coverage of new research, festivals and exhibitions. In keeping with our commitment to music at the cutting edge, we commission a new work from a young composer in every issue, making the score freely available for download and performance.

Our international news and previews, with breaking stories, key awards and forthcoming premieres, combine with reviews of the latest CDs, DVDs and sheet music, and listings of recitals, festivals and courses, to keep you up to date with events and developments around the world.

SIR JOHN TAVENER DIES

Sir John Tavener, the British composer whose
musical trajectory mirrored his exploration of spirituality, has died at the age of 69.

Many Choir
& Organ readers will know Tavener’s music through singing some of his
large body of religious music (The Lamb, Song for Athene, The Protecting Veil).
He joined the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, but his music reflected a far
wider range of influences, as seen in his magnum opus The Veil of the Temple,
the eight-hour all-night vigil (2002); indeed, the composer wrote that ‘it attempts to remove the veils that
hide the same basic truth of all authentic religions.’

Tavener wrote
a single work for solo organ: Mandelion (1981) is a 24-minute work commissioned
for the 1982 Dublin International Organ Festival and was premiered in St
Patrick’s Cathedral by Peter Sweeney. The composer described it as ‘a meditation upon the
changing and distorting images of Christ’.